Assemblage of Time |
A Poem by Tasha Sudan inspired by the work of Andrew Antoniou
There is a zephyr compelling you
between the banks of cloud
or on the blackened surface
moulding salt water
into waves
where a moon cut from cardboard
hangs from a piece of string
and in the slim cool fingers
of the zephyr
it spins.
In the swiss house with the hearts
cut out of the windows glass
everything you see looks loved.
There a zeppelin could appear
on a horizon
and no one would remark on its
wondrous form
filled with who-know-whose
breaths and powered by what
winds;
no one knows.
There are many things you have dreamed
(for instance)
staring out from facades of houses
backing the blind hills
or from this pontoon;
a man with a chest of drawers
(for instance)
in his ribcage, filled with nothing;
a man in a bucket with wheels
who has no legs (for instance);
or a woman with a horses head
pinned to a stick on the deck.
In the borders of such moments
in the hollows of a breeze,
charcoal deepens the cheekbones
of the one you are working on
etching fine faultlines
that bind her to her skin.
You follow faithful as a dog
their minute oily gutters
where something slides surely
as runoff into sea.
You and she, you and they,
from the white page rock away
(or from the hills, or from behind
the heart-shaped shutter's eye)
where the zephyr and your pencil
power a rusty boiler
powering the water
making zephyrs making pencils
making etchlines like currents
not far from here, far down
in the silty ocean floor
sure as a sailors footfall
on the soft boards of a hull.
Tash Sudan 2004